I can't figure out why some contacts aren't receiving emails

[BSchmitz]

I've noticed I have about 655 contacts in our system who are opted-in to a subscription type but aren't receiving emails.  They're not unsubscribed nor is there any bounce reason given.  On their record's timeline there's no indication Hubspot even tried to send the email even though it should have gone out.  There's no error message in the timeline either.

I'm stumped.  Is there something obvious I'm overlooking?

[DeliveryByJess]

Hello @BSchmitz ,

You can check to see if a contact was dropped from a marketing email send by navigating to Recipients > Not Sent from the post send overview.  Contacts who are dropped from a marketing send before it goes out will be listed in this part of the tool with a corresponding reason for the drop. 

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @BSchmitz,

Let's try a few things.

Are you using any exclusion/suppression lists in your emails/workflows that these contacts might have ended up on?

Do you have the GDPR settings enabled, including the "Legal basis required" checkbox? If so, not being unsubscribed wouldn't be sufficient, all of these contacts would have to be actively opted-in.

Lastly, did you by any chance accidentally exclude inactive contacts from your email sends? This is a checkbox in the the Send tab of the email. This can be treacherous for workflow emails, since it's applied on the email and not shown in the workflow.

This is what I can think off on the spot – since it sounds like you've checked unsubscribes, bounces etc. already. When you add a contact like this to the email recipients dropdown, does the number of expected recipients go up or stay the same?

Best regards!

[BSchmitz]

Thank you!  Upon closer inspection, it does appear many of the contacts were not sent an email in the first place due to low engagement.  But on others I see "There was an issue sending an email to this contact" in their timeline.  Is there a way to filter out those "Not Sent" contacts who aren't tagged as bounces, but still aren't being sent multiple emails due to other reasons?

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @BSchmitz,

Yes, you would follow the steps explained by @DeliveryByJess. Navigate to an email in your email tool, click Recipients > Not sent and you'll see those contacts. You can also create a list from this view and filter by different causes:

Hope this helps!